Publisher/Editor

Playing games instead of leading on mass transit

There are two kinds of politicians. Those who lead. Those who follow. Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson is a follower, nodding to his constituents' baser instincts rather than leading them to higher ground.

Given one more chance to unite metro Detroit behind a mass transit system that would fuel economic mobility and growth, the 79-year-old Republican is sticking with his tired old script. The one with racially tinged tropes propping up a politics of division and grievance.

In his State of the County address on Wednesday, Patterson vowed to oppose any regional transit plan that "forces" nine affluent Oakland County communities into a new property-taxing district for metro Detroit.

"I've been asked to force into the tax plan those nine communities … that have long ago opted out of the current transit tax — they don't see a benefit," Patterson said. "Some political leaders south of Eight Mile want me to do it anyway."

Eight Mile Road, of course, is a northern border for Detroit and Wayne County, which are led by regional mass transit boosters, Mayor Mike Duggan and Wayne County Executive Warren Evans. Let's face it: For decades, Eight Mile also has been the symbolic dividing line between communities of white and color, of wealth and poverty, of the powerful and the powerless.

Patterson knows what buttons he's pushing. According to Crain's reporter Chad Livengood, the Oakland County executive said he offered a deal to regional leaders on a new Regional Transit Authority that would raise $1.2 billion in taxes for an improved mass transit network. He would exclude from that taxing coalition Novi, Waterford Township, Lake Angelus, Rochester, Rochester Hills, Keego Harbor, Sylvan Lake, Orchard Lake and Bloomfield Hills.

Patterson complained that elected leaders in Detroit, Wayne County and Washtenaw County want those nine communities — which opted out of the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation in the mid-1990s — included in a proposed service area to raise nearly $1.7 billion in transit taxes over 20 years.

"If someone doesn't see the rub here, they must be playing 'Candy Crush' on their cell phone," Patterson joked.

That's a great line — short as a tweet with a pop cultural reference. But it doesn't address the challenge at hand: The economics of a regional transit system don't work unless the entire region supports it.

And the entire region needs it — the latest proof delivered by Amazon.com in rejecting metro Detroit as a possible home for its second headquarters.

Want more evidence? When Duggan pitched for a Foxconn Technology Group plant last summer, executives of the Taiwanese electronics company worried that the region didn't have enough skilled workers and those workers had no easy way to get to work. "They probably spent an hour with me on the bus routes," Duggan recounted.

Patterson shouldn't blindly follow Duggan, Evans and other pro-transit leaders down the path of their choosing. He should both represent his constituents' interests — which, of course, don't mirror the interests of Wayne County residents — and persuade them to support a sensible regional mass transit system that includes everybody in the burdens and benefits.

It would require leadership to explain to Bloomfield Hills residents that the companies they own or run can't thrive if the region's talent isn't hyper mobile; that their children won't stay in Michigan if companies like Amazon and Foxconn continue to bypass the state for more mobile communities; that the people who work in the businesses around Bloomfield Hills, and who serve food and drinks to Oakland County residents, often come from south of Eight Mile.

I don't know enough about mass transit and metro Detroit politics to tell you exactly what a comprehensive, compromise plan would entail, but I'm reasonably confident we can't get there with old talking points — and without a big, rich chunk of Oakland County.

If Patterson doesn't see the rub here, he must be playing Pac-Man on his flip phone.

Read the response to this column by Oakland County's Bill Mullan here.